Amazon.com weeding out weenie associates

24Apr2007–11:08pm

Looks like I’ll be canceling my Amazon.com (US) associates account and maybe the CA and UK associates accounts as well. I got an e-mail stating that they will be tacking on a $10 maintenance fee my US account since there has not been any type of commission from my links in a long while. Here’s a snip of the email that was sent out to me and quite a few other associates.

Dear Amazon Associate –Greetings from the Amazon Associates Team! We have noticed that it’s been over three years since you last referred a unit to Amazon. We are writing to notify you that on July 1, we will be applying a $10 account maintenance fee to your account. Please review this email to learn more on how you can reactivate your account or avoid this fee by making new payment method choices.

So far, there’s been only one purchase through my links earning me a total of—hot damn…a whopping $0.75! That was earned back in 2003 and the only time they fork over the earnings is when the total is at least $10. Looks like I’ll have to say bye-bye to the $0.75 (or will they give me a credit/Gift Certificate towards a future purchase?). Update: I sent an e-mail inquiring about my situation and was able to get my $0.75 deposited to me.

It’s really bizarre even having the 1 referral/purchase considering that what was actually ordered by the person had nothing to do with anything I was reading at the time. They must have gotten side tracked so I ended up earning the referral as a click through and not a direct buy link.

Oh, well—There’s really no chance of any of my links generating a commission before July 1st so it’s bye-bye associates links. There goes my PHP project of putting together my own script to automate my reading lists. Now I have to re-edit my code again removing the referral links. Sure I can still link to them without the referral code if I wanted to, but I’m sure you have to be an associate in order to log-in to get and use the pictures of the book covers. Now I have to think of another PHP learning project to take up my spare time.